Field
This disclosure is generally related to distribution of digital content. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a system and method for flow control based on a secure fragmentation protocol in a content centric network.
Related Art
The proliferation of the Internet and e-commerce continues to create a vast amount of digital content. Content centric network (CCN) architectures have been designed to facilitate accessing and processing such digital content. A CCN includes entities, or nodes, such as network clients, forwarders (e.g., routers), and content producers, which communicate with each other by sending interest packets for various content items and receiving content object packets in return. CCN interests and content objects are identified by their unique names, which are typically hierarchically structured variable length identifiers (HSVLI). An HSVLI can include contiguous name components ordered from a most general level to a most specific level. Generally, interests and content objects travel through a number of links before they can reach their destination. Each link can have its own maximum transmission unit (MTU), where the differing MTU limits impose different fragmentation requirements.
Fragmentation protocols related to CCN continue to evolve. One secure fragmentation protocol for CCN is known as Fragmentation with Integrity Guarantees and Optional Authentication (FIGOA), described in Ghali et al., “Secure Fragmentation for Content-Centric Networks,” Computing Research Repository, 1405.2861 (2014), which disclosure is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. The FIGOA protocol operates by creating fragments that are chained via hash computation, transmitting fragments with a name that match an interest for the name, and including a signature in the final fragment. However, under the FIGOA protocol, a content producer signs the final fragment, which creates a delayed verification of the signature by a requesting entity until all fragments have been received. This delayed verification may decrease the overall throughput of data and may also result in the injection of malicious packets, which can create inefficiencies and introduce security issues in the network. In addition, the FIGOA protocol does not provide a method to selectively request re-transmission of a specific fragment or subsequence of fragments. When a fragment is dropped, an intermediate node has no way to mark the point at which it drops a fragment stream. A requesting entity re-requests the entire data stream, resulting in further inefficiencies in the network.